![\"Retail](\"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/RETAIL-ONLINE-TRAINING-728-X-90.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Nestled in a back parking lot of the industrial waterfront that lines Brooklyn\u2019s Gowanus Canal is an absolutely fantastic thrift store of the old school \u2014 a sprawling warehouse filled to the brim with used goods organized in a somewhat jumbled manner by general category. Big Reuse<\/strong>\u2019s unassuming exterior blends in perfectly with the loading docks, storage facilities and various trade businesses in the area, but that bare-bones fa\u00e7ade belies a veritable treasure trove within.<\/p>\n The store\u2019s modesty also belies a larger ecosystem of community-based environmental initiatives dedicated to reusing all kinds of waste<\/strong>, from consumer goods to food scraps. In addition to the tens of thousands<\/strong> of items resold every year through its shop, Big Reuse also operates composting programs and street tree care projects across New York City, funded in part by profits from the store. And now, this literal grassroots organization is taking things to the next level with AI.<\/p>\n The Big Reuse thrift shop is one of the first testing grounds for a new AI-powered tech called <\/strong>Thriftly<\/strong> <\/strong>that is aimed at modernizing in-store resale logistics.<\/strong> The company was founded by two veterans of fellow circular economy tech solution Happy Returns<\/strong>, Andy Downard and Josh Packard, and uses AI to tackle one of the trickiest facets of secondhand retail \u2014 pricing.<\/p>\n For years, thrift shops across the country have priced products based on a combination of staff know-how and gut feeling. This somewhat unsystematic system worked for many years and led to many a happy bargain hunter, but as secondhand commerce has gradually moved online, the true value of used goods has become much less murky.<\/p>\n One of the results has been the rise of a new class of online merchants \u2014 resellers.<\/strong> These individuals are skilled at spotting the high-value treasures amid jumbles of junk and have created successful businesses by plucking them up from thrift stores and estate sales then reselling them online at a profit.<\/p>\n Resellers are good clients of thrift stores in their own right, but this new class of secondhand shoppers also has brought to light the fact that the thrift stores themselves \u2014 many of which are nonprofits designed to finance other social initiatives \u2014 could often be making more money<\/strong>. On the morning that Retail TouchPoints<\/em> visited the Big Reuse store, the organization\u2019s Founder and Executive Director Justin Green estimated that at least a third<\/strong> of the current clientele was resellers. \u201cThey come every day, and when I see the big stacks of stuff they walk out with, I mean, it\u2019s great, but I don\u2019t really want to be the reseller supplier,\u201d he said. \u201cThen our regular customers who come in after work feel like it\u2019s all picked over. Ideally, you want to save some of it for everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps even more important, though, is the fact that every extra dollar Big Reuse can make means an extra dollar for its other environmental initiatives.<\/strong> And that\u2019s where Thriftly comes in.<\/p>\n \u201cEach of the tens of thousands of people pricing [in thrift stores] every day are carrying around a bunch of information in their heads, and it\u2019s led to really coarse pricing rules: These are pants, they\u2019re good quality, so they\u2019re going to be $9.99<\/strong>,\u201d said Thriftly Co-founder Downard. \u201cYou end up getting Levi\u2019s and Dockers both priced at $9.99, when really the Levi\u2019s should be more like $16.99, for example,<\/strong> because at $9.99<\/strong> they aren\u2019t staying in the store, a reseller is getting them and they\u2019re going online.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then Dockers priced at $9.99<\/strong> is too much, so they don\u2019t sell and end up getting shipped overseas for salvage,\u201d Downard added. \u201cWhat you want to do is price the Dockers at more like four or five<\/strong> bucks, then they sell and you also get that wallet share from [low-cost retailers like] Walmart<\/strong> and you keep the good stuff in circulation in America. The real opportunity [for thrift stores], with all the money that resellers are currently capturing and the missed opportunities for sales on the lower end, <\/strong>is to capture some or all of that so that they can use it to fund more\u201d of their nonprofit work<\/strong>.<\/p>\n After just three<\/strong> months using Thriftly, Big Reuse already has seen a 15%<\/strong> increase in revenue, and the system isn\u2019t even being used across all areas of the store yet.<\/p>\n Big Reuse is rolling out the pricing changes slowly across categories because, in many cases, items have never even been priced individually before. For example, clothing was previously marked at blanket prices based on product type and how long the item had been in the store (indicated by color-coded tags). Now, each item of clothing is tagged with a price, and the results have been undeniable: Prior to the Thriftly implementation the clothing section of the store would bring in about $7,000<\/strong> a week; now that number is closer to $9,500<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And this bump in sales isn\u2019t even because Big Reuse is making the items that much more expensive; it turns out that customers like seeing the price on the item and simply buy more because it\u2019s a better experience<\/strong>. \u201cPreviously we didn\u2019t have stickers, we didn\u2019t have price tags, so that has been a really big change in and of itself,\u201d said Green. \u201cWe sold everything in units, like all T-shirts were the same price and you had to look up at the sign to see what that price was. But once we put tags on things, we actually sold more stuff. I think people could better see what they were getting and how cheap everything was.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The Big Reuse team also is now better able to take advantage of trends and seasonality<\/strong> in its pricing practices. For example, this season Carhartt<\/strong> jackets were a hot item, selling for as much as $200<\/strong> online. Big Reuse wouldn\u2019t price them that high, but the team is now empowered to price an item like that higher than the store\u2019s standard for a winter coat.<\/p>\n Big Reuse is only at the beginning of its modernization journey, which, in addition to Thriftly, also has included the deployment of advanced POS software from Shopify. Green said the biggest advantage of Shopify\u2019s system is that it allows unlimited SKUs, which is crucial for a secondhand store where every item is unique.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a nonprofit focused on helping the environment, and we do that by diverting materials, so we take pretty much everything<\/strong>,\u201d said Green. (This is true \u2014 during our visit we saw an assembled staircase, a wide range of lumber in varying styles and sizes, a full selection of 3D printers and a Sub-Zero fridge among the store\u2019s offerings).<\/p>\n \u201cBecause we take everything it\u2019s a little bit more chaotic here than even a more traditional thrift store,\u201d added Green. \u201cWe have no idea what\u2019s coming in on a particular day, it\u2019s all over the place, so there\u2019s a lot of brain power that goes into figuring out what to keep, what to price things [at] and sometimes what it even is<\/strong>. The Thriftly system is bringing some order to that chaos.\u201d (What does a staircase go for, one wonders?)<\/p>\n Thriftly operates as an extension of the Shopify POS, and in the sections where it has been rolled out, each item now includes a unique QR-based price tag<\/strong>. Tagging each item offers a range of other advantages beyond more sophisticated pricing. For example, Big Reuse is now able to track items in a way they never could before, assessing sell-through to make adjustments<\/strong> on items that are selling quickly or not quickly enough, and even detecting seasonal sales patterns<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The Thriftly solution also features an AI-powered computer vision system<\/strong> that the Big Reuse team is beginning to use more and more, particularly for those harder-to-identify items. During our visit we tested it out with a couple of items, including a vintage handheld computer vacuum in its original box and a copper tea kettle. An associate took pictures of the items using the camera, and within seconds Thriftly had come back with a series of online listings for visually similar items<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In both cases, some of those listings were exact matches for the somewhat nebulous products in front of us. And in both cases, the items ended up being worth much more than they would have traditionally been priced (who would think that an old computer vacuum could bring in $36<\/strong>?). <\/p>\n Big Reuse doesn\u2019t mimic the online prices exactly (the Mini-Vac went to the shelf priced at $17.49<\/strong>, for example), but that\u2019s still more than it probably would have been priced at last year. \u201cJust three<\/strong> months ago, we would print off long strings of the same price tags and just pull from them based on what we thought the item was worth,\u201d said Green.<\/p>\n The ongoing modernization of this Brooklyn thrift store is improving the experience for both employees and customers, but the best part is that it\u2019s all in service of Big Reuse\u2019s larger mission, said Green.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all connected,\u201d said Green. \u201cThese waste streams \u2014 construction waste, organic waste, simple household waste \u2014 it\u2019s all going into the garbage, so what can we do? Each of our initiatives is aimed at trying to create solutions, but they also create local jobs and keep money in the local economy. Instead of going to Walmart<\/strong> and buying something new and having the money flow out, you\u2019re circulating the money locally. In a world where local small retail is really struggling, this is all another way to participate in the local community<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n And Thriftly is aiming to make it all more efficient and profitable, on the thrift store side that is. The company is still very much in its early innings and Downard has big plans for where the tech can go from here, including a range of interesting use cases for those price tags: \u201cOn the experimental side we\u2019re working to make the QR connect to a URL you can scan with your phone<\/strong>, and it will show you all the comps that were used to help determine the price so you can see if you got a good deal,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if you think you can get a better deal at Ebay<\/strong>, you can just click out and buy it there instead, or you can share it on social. Eventually we also want you to be able to do self-checkout with your own phone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Big](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Big-Reuse-2-1280x905.jpg\")
Why Pricing is Such a Crucial Unlock for Nonprofit Resale<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Big-Reuse-9-1280x960.jpg\")
The Difference a Price Tag Can Make<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Bringing Order to Chaos<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Big-Reuse-8-1280x960.jpg\")
Using the Online Resale Ecosystem to Get Smarter In-Store<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Copper](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Big-Reuse-10-1280x960.jpg\")
![\"Mini-vac](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Big-Reuse-6-1280x960.jpg\")
Reducing Waste While Bolstering Local Economies<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Big-Reuse-7-1280x960.jpg\")